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Descartes' rationalism had a proof of God's existence at its foundation, but it was also a challenge to the theological methodology established by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), which stressed the limitations of human reason, and the need to rely on Biblical revelation. Descartes instead claimed a human capacity to know God and nature through reason alone. However, his rationalist argument for God's existence and guarantorship of the certainty of scientific knowledge was soon rejected as circular. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Cottingham (1992)]] It was supplanted by Newton's experimental philosophy and Locke's empiricism, both of which stressed experience and observation as sources of the limited knowledge to which humans could aspire, and eschewed metaphysics and speculative hypotheses. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Both Newton and Locke were nevertheless devoutly religious, though they held non-standard beliefs. Newton authored an entire volume on Biblical prophesies. [[CiteRef::Mandelbrote (2004)]]
Like many natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society, they sought to use the experimental method to demonstrate that the universe exhibited the order and purposefulness of a designed artifact crafted by an all-powerful Intelligence. Hume's ''Dialogues on Natural Theology'' (1779) was a response to such hopes, and was to raise devastating objections to them. Unlike Locke, Hume saw that empiricism must place God's existence among those speculative questions to be eschewed. [[CiteRef::Hyman (2007)]] Doubts about God's existence also arose among French intellectuals in the mid-eighteenth century, with the first to openly proclaim himself an atheist being Denis Diderot (1713-1784). [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Bristow (2017)]]
|Major Contributions=Hume was one of a number of eighteenth century British philosophers whose work was inspired primarily by Newton's physical theories and experimental philosophy. Hume and Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) believed that the mind's operations could be studied by broadly Newtonian observational methods, and in both cases this led them to forms of local skepticism. Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) and David Hartley (1705-1757) applied Newtonianism to both the operations of the mind and to its substance, becoming materialists. George Turnbull (1698-1748) and his pupil Thomas Reid(1710-1796) sought to ground Newtonian empiricism in a common-sense understanding of the world. [[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]] Hume's main philosophical contributions were made via several works. The first was ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' published in three volumes in 1739 and 1740, when Hume was 29 years old. Since it sold poorly, Hume recast the material into two later publications, ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding'', published in 1748, and ''concerning the Principles of Morals'' published in 1751. Because of its controversial nature, Hume had ''Dialogs concerning Natural Religion'' published posthumously in 1779, three years after his death. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)]]
=== Hume and The Science of Human Nature ===
Hume's most ambitious skeptical attack on the possibility of theological knowledge was his ''Dialogues concerning Natural Religion'', which he arranged to have published posthumously because of its inflammatory nature. In it, Hume raised devastating objections to the claim that the universe showed evidence of purposeful design by an Intelligent Creator. This claim was then widely popular among natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]] The ''Dialogues'' is written as a conversation between three characters; ''Cleanthes'', a proponent of the design argument, ''Demea'', a mystic, and ''Philo'', a religious skeptic generally supposed to be Hume's spokesperson. Philo argues that the analogy between the universe and a designed artifact is weak. For example, we experience only one universe and have nothing to compare it to. We recognize human artifacts by contrast with non-artifacts such as rocks. He also notes that we have no experience of the origin of the universe, and that causal inference requires a basis in experienced constant conjunction between two things. For the origin of the universe we have nothing of the sort. ''Demea'' deems ''Cleanthes'' concept of God as cosmic designer to be anthropomorphic and limiting. In a discussion of the human condition, ''Philo'' asks why an infinitely wise, powerful, and good God would permit human suffering. By the end, Hume's characters arguments lead the reader to the conclude, with ''Philo'', that God's nature seems inconceivable, incomprehensible, and indefinable and therefore the question of God's existence is rendered meaningless. [[CiteRef::Hume (2007)]][[CiteRef::Oppy (1996)]][[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]]
|Criticism=Hume's skeptical arguments were troubling to many, and received a good deal of criticism. He was criticized, notably, by a fellow Scottish philosopher of his times; Thomas Reid (1710-1796) . [[CiteRef::Fieser (2017)]][[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]] Reid rejected Hume's theories of perception and causation because of their skeptical consequences. Hume supposed that our perceptual experience was of impressions in our minds. He also maintained that causal relations do not exist in the world, but are rather posited in our minds when two events are constantly conjoined in experience. Such views, taken together made it impossible to claim that our perceptual impressions are caused by objects in an external world. This would require that external objects themselves, and our impressions of them be conjoined in our experience, which is obviously impossible. Hume accepted that his belief in an external world was merely a matter of habit, custom, or instinct, and could not be justified. Reid found this unacceptable, and supposed that our perceptual experience was directly of objects in the world, just as everyday common sense tells us. He noted that such direct experience was no more mysterious than Hume's supposition that we directly experienced impressions in our mind. [[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]][[CiteRef::Reid (2007)|pp. 1-10]] Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume's supposition that the direct objects of perception were mental entities such as ideas, impressions, sensations, or sense data remained widely popular into the twentieth century, [[CiteRef::Hatfield (2004)]] but had been strongly challenged by the beginning of the twenty first century [[CiteRef::Warren(2005)]][[CiteRef::Thompson (2007)]]. By that time though, the relationship between this problem and that of external world skepticism had been substantially reconfigured. [[CiteRef::Clark (2017)]]
Reid likewise rejected Hume's view of causality. He noted that a view of causality based on constant conjunctions in our experience could not give a causal account of unique events. Suppose, he posited, that an earthquake struck Mexico City for the first time in its history, resulting in the destruction of the city. Under Hume's definition, we could not claim that the earthquake caused the destruction of the city, since the two events, being unique, are not constantly conjoined in experience. He further noted that night following day and day following night are constantly conjoined experiences, but we generally do not claim that day causes night and night causes day, but rather that both are caused by Earth's rotation. Reid proposes instead that two events have a causal relationship whenever they are conjoined by a law of nature, whether or not they are constantly conjoined in experience. Unlike Hume, Reid maintains that causes necessitate their effects even though he concedes that this necessitation is not evident through perception alone. [[CiteRef::Nichols and Yaffe (2016)]]
